The conflict between science and religion was arguably the grand intellectual theme of the Long Nineteenth Century. Romantic
poets (and a surprising number of physicists) sought a middle ground; they hoped for a more spiritual or mystical kind of exact science
in tune with ancient wisdom but retaining all the new discoveries, perhaps something akin to German Naturphilosophie.
Other poets, including some of the best known, tended toward the extremes of anti-scientific or anti-religious sentiment. All opinions are represented
here; it is perhaps a surprise that the Romantic position seems to have remained the most popular long after Darwin. One
possible explanation is that new scientific insights into the age and size of the universe, far from demoralising most poets,
resonated with their religious sense of the Dionysian sublime.
TECHNICAL NOTE: The great majority of the links below are to
scanned antique books at the Internet Archive, most of them
anthologies. Poems frequently run for several pages; when coming
to the apparent end of a poem, turn the page to make sure!
Pro-Science, Anti-Religion
---
Religious Doubts
---
Pro-Religion, Anti-Science (or Anti-Scientism)
---
Science-Religion Synthesis
---
Eternity and Deep Time
---
Evolution
(on its own page)
---
Romanticism/Naturphilosophie
(on its own page)
---
---
Back to Main Subject Index
- RELIGION: Against (including scientistic attacks on specific religions,even when not aimed at religion in general.)
(to be added)
- De Morgan, Augustus:
The Bible:
Mild anti-religious satire. De Morgan kept his exact
religious views secret,
but was generally considered an agnostic, if not an
atheist. His wife, however, was
an enthusiastic Spiritualist, and because of her he was
one of the first of the many Nineteenth Century scientists
who took "psychic phenomena" seriously.
- Dickinson, Emily:
Faith
Almost certainly not
intended as an anti-religious poem, but widely read as one in the Twentieth Century.
- Emerson, Edwin, Sr.:
The Monk of the Tyrol
Eight-page anti-religious
geology poem.
- Evanson, R. T.:
Shooting Stars, or the Fall of Meteors.
Science explains phenomena that would once have inspired superstitious terror. Inspired by an actual meteor shower in 1866.
- Hardy, Thomas:
The Aerolite
Panspermia. (Published 1927; under copyright in some countries.)
- Hardy, Thomas:
God-Forgotten
Earth? Oh, maybe I did create that planet. But its inhabitants haven't stayed in
touch like everybody else, have they?
- Hardy, Thomas:
Nature's Questioning
"No answerer I."
- Hardy, Thomas:
A Sign-Seeker
If only science would discover life after death! But it won't.
- Malone, Walter:
The Agnostic's Creed.
Typical of middle-class American male thought ca. 1900: brave, bluff,
well-meaning, but just
a bit shallow; one imagines the speaker addressing his Masonic Lodge.
- Robinson, Edwin Arlington:
The Man Against the Sky
The world is a blind rush of atoms in the void, etc.
- Shelley, Percy Bysshe:
Queen Mab
The Nineteenth Century equivalent of The Golden
Compass: fairy tale (leavened with cutting-edge science) in the service of atheism.
See also the first few of Shelley's notes,
giving the astronomical inspiration of the poem.
- Very, Jones:
The Origin of Man
is God. (But this is only glancingly an anti-evolution poem; its main target seems to
be various "misguided" forms of traditional religion.)
- Very, Jones:
The Triumphs of Science and of Faith
If religion were as advanced as technology (in the age of the Transatlantic Cable), there would be no war.
- Wordsworth, William:
The Power of Education
The triumph of science of superstition. Perhaps Wordsworth's first poem,
written when he was 14.
RELIGION: Doubt (This is a nebulous category, but very characteristic of the Nineteenth Century. It includes poems by true agnostics, discrete atheists, and believers passing through a "dark night of the soul".)
- Arnold, Matthew:
Dover Beach: Perhaps the most famous of all Victorian
crisis-of-doubt poems.
(performed by Hernan Berisso et al.)
Browning, Robert:
Caliban Upon Setebos
"Or, Natural Theology in the Island." The various animals
mentioned in the
poem all figure in The Voyage of the Beagle, to which
this is evidently a response.
Browning, Robert:
An Epistle
"Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab
Physician": to wit,
meeting and scientifically examining the resurrected Lazarus.
Dixon, Richard Watson:
The Silent Heavens
The depressing effect of the Copernican world-view. Dixon was an Anglican clergyman.
Dowden, Edward:
The Inner Life
A long poem about searching for God in the disenchanted
modern universe. An interesting aside about
"Darwinism in morals" raises the question of whether
final causes might exist in evolution.
Gilder, Richard Watson:
Destiny
Kipling, Rudyard:
The Four Angels
The futility of Promethean struggle. Apparently attractive to folk-singers.
Masefield, John:
If all be governed by the moving stars
On the surface an astrology poem, but actually about the late Nineteenth Century
world-view. (Includes the poems "In emptiest furthest heaven" and
"Perhaps in chasms".)
Masefield, John:
Lollingdon Downs
Fifteen-part poem seeking the meaning of life in the light of biological and
astronomical advances.
Masefield, John:
So in the empty sky the stars appear
(Continued on next page.) A typical Later Victorian cosmic meditation.
Masters, Edgar Lee:
Out of the Dust (Beelzebub's Song):
Pessimistic take on evolution.
Masters, Edgar Lee:
Over the Soundless Depths (The Sun's Song):
The end of the Spoon River Anthology.
Masters, Edgar Lee:
Professor Newcomer: Why has evolution given man a
mind of infinite aspirations
when all nature cares about is survival?
Masters, Edgar Lee:
Scholfield Huxley: People create wonderful things: science, technology, art ...
They almost touch God. Then they die anyway.
Melville, Herman:
Epilogue to Clarel
"If Luther's day expand to Darwin's year //
Shall that exclude the hope, foreclose the fear?"
Noyes, Alfred: The Last Voyage
Thoughts about medicine, religion, and physics, with mortality looming over all.
Published in 1930 and not available online because of copyright issues.
Robinson, Mary F.:
The Stars
A subtle Victorian doubt poem with extraterrestrial life and cosmic vastness.
Smith, Walter Chalmers:
A Dream
or rather nightmare, triggered by Laplace's remark about not needing the
God-hypothesis.
Smith, Walter Chalmers:
Hilda Among the Broken Gods, Prologue
Clever Faust-inspired supernatural beginning to a naturalistic story.
Mysterious voices in an empty church: one sums up the Victorian dilemma
with the words of Mary Magdalene
"They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid
Him," while another remarks "Now that the gods are certainly dead //
(Brahma and Zeus and the Father and all) // With a desk and a lime-light
overhead // We might use this up for a lecture-hall."
Smith, Walter Chalmers:
Hilda Among the Broken Gods, Book III
Winifred Urquhart, who narrates Book III of Smith's Rashomon-style
novel-in-verse, is one of the few female scientists in
serious Nineteenth Century literature. The science-vs.-religion aspect of
the story (as opposed to the love-triangle aspect) also appears in the
September, 18-- section of the title character's narrative, but is less
prominent, curiously, in the accounts given by male characters.
Smith, Walter Chalmers:
Latto
Sympathetic portrait of a Victorian scientist unable to decide between materialism
and German philosophical idealism as his substitute for religion.
Stephens, James:
The Shell
The terrifying sense of a world without humanity.
Tabb, John Bannister:
The Biologist
... thinks about death.
Tennyson:
In Memoriam
Wheeler Wilcox, Ella:
Plea to Science
Just leave Jesus alone, OK? He's important to me.
RELIGION: Pro-Religion, Anti-Science (or at least Anti-Scientism)
- Blake, William:
Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau
- Blake, William:
The Prophetic Books: Vala and Jerusalem
- Campbell, Thomas:
To the Rainbow
Anti-scientific.
- Chesterton, G. K.:
To a Holy Roller
About the Scopes Trial. Chesterton despised both Darwinism and
fundamentalist Protestantism.
- Clough, Arthur Hugh:
The New Sinai
Against scientific atheism.
- Cowper, William:
From The Task: Book III
(Starting at 'Some drill and bore // The solid earth, and from the strata there'). Strong religiously motivated attack on science (especially geology and astronomy), although later presents a less detailed vision of the 'Christian philosopher', epitomised by Newton.
- Dickinson, Emily:
Arcturus
- Duganne, Augustine:
Injuresoul: A Satire for Science
The title refers to the famous agnostic Robert Ingersoll, but the poem also attacks
Darwinism, mainstream science, and rationalism in general. Duganne's endnotes
present his own extremely unorthodox, vaguely alchemical "scientific" theories,
which he intends to be more compatible with Christianity: "Nitrogen,
hydrogen, and oxygen ... eliminate those three gases ... and
we should again breathe the air Adam breathed in Eden."
- Keats, John:
What wreath for Lamia?:
From Lamia. Philosophy disenchants the world, as optics has disenchanted the rainbow.
- Maxwell, James Clerk:
A Vision: of a Wrangler, of a University, of Pedantry, and of Philosophy
- Sigourney, Lydia H.:
Science and Religion
The latter can do things even the former cannot: end despair, pardon sins,
disarm the tomb.
- Smith, Walter Chalmers:
A Dream
or rather nightmare, triggered by Laplace's remark about not needing the
God-hypothesis.
- Smith, Walter Chalmers:
Hilda Among the Broken Gods, Book III
Winifred Urquhart, who narrates Book III of Smith's Rashomon-style
novel-in-verse, is one of the few female scientists in
serious Nineteenth Century literature. The science-vs.-religion aspect of
the story (as opposed to the love-triangle aspect) also appears in the
September, 18-- section of the title character's narrative, but is less
prominent, curiously, in the accounts given by male characters.
- Smith, Walter Chalmers:
Olrig Grange, Book VI
Anti-scientific.
- Tabb, John Bannister:
The Astronomer
The brain is more astonishing than the sky.
- Tabb, John Bannister:
The Biologist
... thinks about death.
- Tabb, John Bannister:
Science
is Martha to Faith's Mary.
- Tupper, Martin:
Of Scripture and Science
Scripture does not stoop to speaking of scientific subjects, which are
minor because they concern time rather than eternity. On the other hand,
there may well be all sorts of advanced scientific
concepts hidden in scripture,
which science is gradually rediscovering.
- Very, Jones:
Nature a Living Teacher
as opposed to science.
- Wheeler Wilcox, Ella:
Plea to Science
Just leave Jesus alone, OK? He's important to me.
- Willis, Nathaniel Parker:
The Scholar of Thebet Ben Khorat
In Twenty-first Century English, the title would be
"The Student Assistant of Thābit ibn Qurra," the Ninth Century
Sabian scientist and wizard. More technical than most astronomy poems,
even though the moral is that science drives people mad.
- Wood, Charles Erskine Scott:
The Poet in the Desert
Long, anti-scientific, vaguely Taoist piece. This is the 1915 version;
Wood published a
revised edition in 1918.
RELIGION: Seen as Allied to Science.
- Bailey, Philip James:
Knowledge Meaning of God, as manifest in the infinite, interconnected
universe.
- Bailey, Philip James:
A Spiritual Legend
Literally Gnostic Neo-Platonist creation myth. There
is an absolute duality between the evil material world and God, who did not
so much create the universe as organise it through the
intermediation of angels. Blends state-of-the-art geological and geographical
information with cabalistic and magical lore.
- Bailey, Philip James:
Universal Hymn
An attempt to update
Psalm 148 with modern scientific knowledge.
One passage discusses the theory that the Main Belt asteroids are fragments
of a ruined planet, and suggests that they will be put back together in the
world to come!
- Barbauld, Anna Lætitia:
An Address to the Deity
Omnipresent God in the scientific universe.
- Bell, James Madison:
Creation Light
Arguably evolutionist, certainly pro-scientific.
- Clark, Thomas Curtis:
In an Age of Science
Science as the ally of (true) religion.
- Coleridge, Samuel Taylor:
Religious Musings
including "musings" on the history and meaning of
physics.
- Coles, Abraham:
Cosmos
A response in verse to Humboldt's Cosmos, containing two verse translations of Psalm 104, a
Romantic science poem God in Nature, and a morning hymn.
- Davy, Humphry:
Spinosism
Expressing religious views common enough among the Romantics, though
whether Spinoza would have accepted them seems less certain.
- Davy, Humphry:
Yours is the Harp of Ages & the Voice
[At the blog Theories &
Methods]
- Dickinson, Emily:
Faith
- Duganne, Augustine:
Injuresoul: A Satire for Science
The title refers to the famous agnostic Robert Ingersoll, but the poem also attacks
Darwinism, mainstream science, and rationalism in general. Duganne's endnotes
present his own extremely unorthodox, vaguely alchemical "scientific" theories,
which he intends to be more compatible with Christianity: "Nitrogen,
hydrogen, and oxygen ... eliminate those three gases ... and
we should again breathe the air Adam breathed in Eden."
- Duganne, Augustine:
Men of Thought
From The Iron Harp. Includes the memorable, or at least unusual,
inspirational lines: "Insects build the coral isles // Insects pierce the ocean
through: // Ye are men, and will ye quail // When the insect did
not fail?"
- Duganne, Augustine:
The Mission of Intellect
- Dunn, Cyrus George:
The Autobiography of a Crystal in the Formation of the Solar System
A pseudo-Miltonic epic; the content is almost entirely religious.
- Gilder, Richard Watson:
The Invisible
Quite a different reaction to a learn'd astronomer's lecture from
Whitman's!
- Gilder, Richard Watson:
Law
Love and gravity are literally the same: an idea that appealed to many
Romantic scientists.
- Grabiel, Zephaniah O.:
Nature
Mainly a religious poem about Creation week,
with some quasi-scientific material. Stiffly written and
72 pages long.
- Hackett, Edward:
Sun Planets and Solar Systems as Seen by the Spiritual Eye of the Soul: A
Book in Verse
While this self-published American work from 1904 is not exactly great
literature and shows limited knowledge of
science, it contains (p. 33) an early example of the
"spaceship Earth" metaphor so popular in the later Twentieth Century.
- Hamilton, William Rowan:
O Brooding Spirit Of Wisdom And Of Love
Hamilton prays that he may conquer his own vanity and rejoice when other people
make scientific discoveries. Overcoming the temptation of pride and the desire to
be claim priority was one of Hamilton's major spiritual concerns.
- Hamilton, William Rowan:
In Ely Cathedral
A prayer for the ecclesiastical unity of the British Isles, inspired by an occasion when Hamilton
(an Irishman), John Herschel (an Englishman), and James Forbes (a Scotsman) worshipped together in Ely.
The same incident inspired Herschel's poem,
On a Scene in Ely Cathedral.
- Havergal, Frances Ridley:
Faith and Reason
"Faith leads the way, and Reason learns // To follow in her train."
- Holmes, Oliver Wendell:
The Chambered Nautilus
For many years, this was among the most
famous natural-history (and natural-theology) poems in the English language.
- Holmes, Oliver Wendell:
In the Twilight
The aging poet wonders what technological and
religious developments will transform the world in the centuries after
his death. Includes a comic refutation of Ecclesiastes' "nothing new under
the sun": Were nations coupled with a wire? // Did Tarshish telegraph to
Tyre?
- Holmes, Oliver Wendell:
Wind-Clouds and Star-Drifts
A very long poem embedded in Holmes's
novel The Poet at the Breakfast-Table; the speaker
is a character called only "the Young Astronomer". Like Tennyson's In
Memoriam and several other classic Victorian poems, Wind-Clouds
and Star-Drifts explores the apparently widening gap between Science and
Faith, and the problem of how to lead a meaningful life in a world where God's
existence is more of a fervent hope than a self-evident fact.
- Howells, William Dean:
Statistics
The concluding stanza (turn the page!) includes the "gyre" theory of
progress best known from Yeats. Illustrations by Howard Pyle.
- Kipling, Rudyard:
McAndrew's Hymn
A "dour Scots engineer" addresses a twelve-page soliloquy to God.
equating McAndrew with
the Twenty-Third Century's
most famous dour Scots engineer. Kipling, who believed that human
nature never changes, would have loved this adaptation, reminiscent
of his own futuristic novella With the Night
Mail.
MacKaye, Percy:
Edison
MacKaye, Percy:
Goethals
MacKaye, Percy:
Panama Hymn
Maxwell, James Clerk:
A Student's Evening Hymn
Maxwell, James Clerk:
There Are Some Folks That Say
Meynell, Alice:
Christ in the Universe No other planet "knows the
secret, cherished, perilous // The terrible, shamefast, frightened,
whispered, sweet // Heart-shattering secret" of the Incarnation.
Meynell, Alice:
The Launch The afterlife has its own, undiscovered physics.
Noyes, Alfred: The Torch-Bearers
Epic science-and-religion trilogy.
-
Watchers of the Sky
History of astronomy in verse.
Copernicus
Tycho Brahe
Kepler
Galileo
Newton
William Herschel Conducts
Sir John Herschel Remembers
Epilogue
The Book of the Earth
History of geology and evolutionary theory from Pythagoras to Darwin.
Published in 1925 and not available online because of copyright issues.
The Last Voyage
Thoughts about medicine, religion, and physics, with mortality looming over all.
Published in 1930 and not available online because of copyright issues.
Ross, Sir Ronald:
In Exile:
Very long; Ross's spiritual autobiography.
The astonishing lines that Ross composed on 1897 August 21, the day of
his greatest discovery, and later embedded in the text of In Exile.
Rossetti, Christina:
All Thy Works Praise Thee, O Lord including galaxies and
nebulæ: "No thing is far or near, and therefore
we float neither far nor near; but where we be weave dances
round the Throne perpetually."
Smart, Christopher:
A Song to David: Not everyone in the 1700s saw
a conflict between science and religion ...
Streeter, Oscar W. ("The Homeless Boy"): A
Dream of Life in Other Worlds, with God in Everything
Argues that extraterrestrial races were unaffected by Adam's
fall, and live in paradisiacal conditions.
Tabb, John Bannister:
Science
is Martha to Faith's Mary.
Tennyson:
The Higher Pantheism
Tilton, Theodore:
The Chant Celestial
Religious poem with a few scientific allusions.
Tupper, Martin:
Of Curious Questions
Among them, the question of extraterrestrial life.
Tupper, Martin:
Of Invention
Only God actually invents anything. Ideas are conserved, just as
matter is, but both may be recombined. Invention "is to find out things
that are, not to create the unexisting."
Tupper, Martin:
Of Scripture and Science
Scripture does not stoop to speaking of scientific subjects, which are
minor because they concern time rather than eternity. On the other hand,
there may well be all sorts of advanced scientific concepts hidden in
scripture,
which science is gradually rediscovering.
Tupper, Martin:
Of the Starry Heavens
Combines fairly extensive knowledge of astronomy with odd
speculations about the various planets as suitable homes for angels (e.g. the
gas giants are less grossly material than the Earth).
Turner, Rev. Charles Tennyson:
Science and Faith
Presents a solution to the conflict between them
which would gain wide currency in the Twentieth Century:
"Each has its orbit round Truth's central Sun !"
Very, Jones:
Hymn Sung at the Dedication of the Peabody Academy of Science
Science seeks the ends for which things were designed, i.e., how they may serve humans, as God intended.
Very, Jones:
Know Thyself
Religious reflexions inspired by a lecture on anatomy.
Very, Jones:
The Man of Science
learns the lesson of Job. This seems to be the poem that best exemplifies Very's attitude to science.
Very, Jones:
The Meteorologists Science is all very well, but only if it leads to higher transcendental truths.
Very, Jones:
The Moss and its Teachings
The mighty works of God, visible through a microscope.
Very, Jones:
Nature Intelligible
Traditional Romantic view of science.
Very, Jones:
The Potato Blight
is a message from God, not something explicable by science.
Very, Jones:
The Railroad as a John the Baptist image.
White, Henry Kirke:
Lines Written on a Survey of the Heavens
Astronomy leads to thoughts of God and the vanity of earthly ambitions.
Whitman, Walt:
Miracles All things are miracles.
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler:
Sirius Although the "droll tale of Genesis" is absurdly parochial,
the vastness of the universe revealed by modern astronomy testifies to the
incomprehensible greatness of God.
Williams, Sarah:
The Old Astronomer
Famous (but over-long) sentimental poem about a dying scientist.
Contains the much-quoted line "I have loved the stars too truly to
be fearful of the night."
Wordsworth, William:
Lines Written as a School Exercise
At age 14, praising the age of Reason and Protestantism, considered synonymous.
ETERNITY, INFINITY, AND DEEP TIME:
- Arnold, Matthew:
Dover Beach: Perhaps the most famous of all Victorian
crisis-of-doubt poems.
(performed by Hernan Berisso et al.)
Balmont, Konstantin Dmitrievich:
Centuries of Centuries Will Pass
Translated by Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky.
Barbauld, Anna Lætitia:
Eighteen Hundred and Eleven.
The second half of this poem, looking past 1811 to the distant future, is
an early example of "post-apocalyptic" science-fiction, as tourists
from Lake Ontario visit the ruins of London: "Choked no
more with fleets, fair Thames survey through reeds and sedge pursue his
idle way."
Barbauld, Anna Lætitia:
Eternity.
"Wrecks of empires and of worlds are borne like atoms on its bosom."
Barnes, William:
Old as Duncliffe Hill The title is an English proverb, but Barnes objects that
geologically old is old indeed.
Bell, James Madison:
Apostrophe of Time
Bell, James Madison:
Creation Light
Arguably evolutionist, certainly pro-scientific.
Blind, Mathilde: The Ascent of Man:
Book-length poem about cosmic history, showing that the Romantic
world-view persisted long after Darwin.
Bowles, William Lisle:
Days Departed, or Banwell Hill "A Lay of the Severn Sea".
A long poem about the West of England and the author's religious
views, partly occasioned by fossil discoveries in
Banwell
Caves and elsewhere. Like the other scientifically-inclined
clergymen who explored the caves, Bowles was an
Old Earth Creationist, seeking evidence of both the Flood and
the forgotten ages before it.
Lord Byron:
Darkness Possibly inspired by the atmospheric effects of the
Mount Tambora eruption in 1815, this is Byron's image of a
devastated future Earth.
Channing, William Ellery:
The Wanderer, Part VI: The Cape
Discusses its prehistory, although more interested in later times.
Chesterton, G. K.:
King's Cross Station
Which will someday be a ruin.
Coles, Abraham:
Cosmos
A response in verse to Humboldt's Cosmos, containing two verse translations of Psalm 104, a
Romantic science poem God in Nature, and a morning hymn.
Coles, Abraham:
Man the Microcosm
So far as I am aware, noöne had attempted to write a piece like this since the 1600s.
Davidson, John:
Fleet Street "... was once a silence in the ether." This rather
amazing poem depicts all of the street's history, from the formation
of the solar system until the Edwardian Age, coexisting in a single Now.
The discussion of the chemical elements anticipates the "we are
star-stuff" rhetoric of Carl Sagan -- but then, a little disappointingly,
turns it into mild social satire.
Dickinson, Emily:
Aurora
"Disdaining men and oxygen // For arrogance of them."
Dickinson, Emily:
Aurora is the Effort
Arguably one of her best quatrains, although little known.
Dunn, Cyrus George:
The Autobiography of a Crystal in the Formation of the Solar System
A pseudo-Miltonic epic; the content is almost entirely religious.
Einar Benediktsson:
Northern Lights
Emerson, Edwin, Sr.:
The Monk of the Tyrol Eight-page anti-religious
geology poem.
Foley, J. W.:
The Unrest of Knowledge
Comic version of the (very real) depressing effect that pessimistic
cosmological speculations had on Late Victorian thought.
Gilder, Richard Watson:
Destiny
Gilder, Richard Watson:
The Invisible
Quite a different reaction to a learn'd astronomer's lecture from
Whitman's!
Hardy, Thomas:
The Comet at Yalbury or Yell'ham
When it comes back, you'll be dead.
Hayne, Paul Hamilton:
A Thousand Years from Now
Technological progress; the immensity of time; love conquers all.
Herman, Jay H.:
Night on the Desert
Holmes, Oliver Wendell:
Wind-Clouds and Star-Drifts A very long poem embedded in Holmes's
novel The Poet at the Breakfast-Table; the speaker
is a character called only "the Young Astronomer". Like Tennyson's In
Memoriam and several other classic Victorian poems, Wind-Clouds
and Star-Drifts explores the apparently widening gap between Science and
Faith, and the problem of how to lead a meaningful life in a world where God's
existence is more of a fervent hope than a self-evident fact.
Kendall, May:
Ether Insatiable
An ode to that which "fills circumambient space". This could easily
be set to music.
Kendall, May:
Love and Matter A very clear statement of the Late
Victorian cosmic dilemma: what is the role of Love (or any human
value) in an apparently Godless universe doomed to a maximum-entropy
heat death?
Kendall, May:
A Warning to New Worlds
Urges other planets to avoid replicating Earth's
unfortunate evolutionary path -- don't even solidify,
if you can help it!.
Malone, Walter:
Hernando De Soto, Book XXVI.
Hernando De Soto is an epic poem, 592 pages long, about the
conquistador's exploits on both American continents. One of the major
characters, Codro, is an omniscient wizard-scientist. Here
he guides the dying hero through an evolutionist prehistory.
(The next book, unexpectedly, features Norse gods battling Fenris Wolf
and the Midgard Serpent!)
Masters, Edgar Lee:
Over the Soundless Depths (The Sun's Song):
The end of the Spoon River Anthology.
Meredith, George:
Meditation Under Stars
"What links are ours with orbs that are //
So resolutely far?"
Noyes, Alfred:
A Chant of the Ages
Trying to come to terms with the scientific world-view.
Robinson, Mary F.:
The Stars
A subtle Victorian doubt poem with extraterrestrial life and cosmic
vastness.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe:
Ozymandias
Based on
Diodorus Siculus,
Bibliotheca Historica, (i. 47).
Shelley, Percy Bysshe:
Prometheus Unbound, Act IV
Shelley, Percy Bysshe:
Queen Mab
The Nineteenth Century equivalent of The Golden
Compass: fairy tale (leavened with cutting-edge science)
in the service of atheism.
See also the first few of
Shelley's notes,
giving the astronomical inspiration of the poem.
Smith, Charlotte:
Beachy Head, with other poems
Smith, Charlotte:
Elegiac Sonnet LXXVII: To the Insect of the Gossamer: "Small,
viewless Æronaut ... with what design in Æther dost
thou launch thy form minute?"
Smith, Clark Ashton:
Ode to the Abyss
Smith, Clark Ashton:
Song of a Comet
Smith, Clark Ashton:
A Song of the Stars
Smith, Clark Ashton:
To the Sun
Smith, Horace:
Address to the Alabaster Sarcophagus Lately Deposited in the British
Museum
The alabster was already immensely ancient
when the Egyptians carved it. Probably Smith's most interesting science poem.
Smith, Horace:
On A Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered
Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt
In 1817, Smith and Shelley challenged one another
to produce a sonnet on a
specific passage in the
Bibliotheca Historica of Diodorus Siculus (i. 47).
Smith wrote this; Shelley wrote Ozymandias.
Smith, Langdon:
Evolution
A love-story spanning geological time.
There are at least two musical versions, both
greatly shortened and
adapted almost beyond recognition. One
was sung as a duet by Julie Andrews and
Kermit the Frog, with the scientific content removed;
available videos are probably under copyright.
At the opposite extreme, there is a
version by Richard Milner, who tries to update the
geology (and for some reason
sings with an extremely annoying pseudo-French accent).
Stephens, J. Burton:
Born Before His Time
Long comic piece about a chap with mineral rights to some carbon that
"was hardly more than lignite, though a little more than peat, but
some day ... bound to prove a treasure."
Stephens, J. Burton:
Macaulay's New Zealander
Macaulay's 1840 anticipation of a time when
"some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude,
take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's"
was the Nineteenth Century's most famous vision of the future until Wells's
Time Machine. It had a special resonance, obviously, for Stephens
in the Antipodes.
Taylor, Bayard:
All or Nothing
Parody of Romantic cosmology and the grandeur of geologic time.
Taylor, Bert Leston:
Absolute Zero In light of the universe's immensity, what is
less significant than a newspaper column? People who write in to complain about it.
Taylor, Bert Leston:
A Ballade of Star Dust:
"Star dust our end, from dust we came: // The stuff of Cosmos is the same."
Taylor, Bert Leston:
Canopus Interstellar distances put political conventions in perspective.
Tennyson:
Locksley Hall Sixty Years After
Including remarks on how the Earth might appear from space.
Tennyson:
In Memoriam
Tennyson:
De Profundis
Thompson, Francis:
An Anthem of Earth
A rather long poem about the planet that is both the mother and the grave of humans, plesiosaurs, and others.
Very, Jones:
To the Fossil Flower
Whether it lived before or after the arrival of humans--perhaps it was even part of the
original creation!--it exists now to awaken thoughts of love and of deep time.
Wheeler Wilcox, Ella:
Sirius Although the "droll tale of Genesis" is absurdly parochial,
the vastness of the universe revealed by modern astronomy testifies to the
incomprehensible greatness of God.
White, Henry Kirke:
Lines Written on a Survey of the Heavens
Astronomy leads to thoughts of God and the vanity of earthly ambitions.
White, Henry Kirke:
Time
Very long. Includes a passage anticipating Macaulay's New Zealander.
Whitman, Walt:
On the Beach at Night Alone The interconnectedness of all things.
Whitman, Walt:
The World Beneath the Brine The deep sea
(one of the Nineteenth Century's
scientific frontiers) as an alien universe.
Wordsworth, William:
The Pass of Kirkstone :
Geological time.
